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Kiefer Sutherland

Kiefer Sutherland has always been especially good at making stillness feel threatening. Born on 21 December 1966 at St Mary’s Hospital in London’s Paddington district, the British-Canadian actor is the son of Canadian actors Donald Sutherland and Shirley Douglas. His screen career soon developed around a presence that could be watchful, volatile or coldly controlled—sometimes all within the same performance. Stand by Me was the first film he made in the United States, and his neighbourhood bully brought real danger to the edges of Rob Reiner’s coming-of-age story. After a supporting part in At Close Range, Sutherland played David in The Lost Boys, giving Joel Schumacher’s vampire film one of its defining faces. Appearances in Bright Lights, Big City and the Western Young Guns followed, with Sutherland starring alongside Emilio Estevez and Lou Diamond Phillips in the latter. He worked with Phillips again in the crime-action film Renegades. Flatliners moved him into a lead role within an ensemble that included Julia Roberts and Kevin Bacon. The film also reunited him with Schumacher, beginning a run of collaborations that later included Phone Booth. Sutherland’s early-1990s work showed how naturally he could fit into very different cinematic worlds: he played agent Sam Stanley in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me and a junior officer serving under Jack Nicholson’s colonel in A Few Good Men. Dark City gave him another place inside a shadowy, disorienting genre film, while Phone Booth demonstrated the continuing usefulness of his tightly wound screen presence. Across these movies, Sutherland rarely feels casual; even when supporting the story, he brings tension with him. Since 2001, he has been most widely associated with Jack Bauer in the television series 24. After four nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, he won in 2006 for the show’s fifth season. Alongside acting, his work has also extended to directing, producing, voice acting and music, including the albums Down in a Hole and Reckless and Me.